Friday, January 28, 2011

Last Week At The Hospital

Well, I got redundant tests and they still don't know what I have/had. I don't have a fever anymore but I'm still feeling exhausted, unstable, and shaky. We started out at urgent care at the neuro-oncoligists orders. They of course futzed around for a bit, then the tests began. They weren't equipped to access my port so they had to draw blood from my arm, which in the best of circumstances is difficult. Usually it takes about 45 minutes and lots of pokes. The nurse who drew blood from me was ether really good or really lucky and got it after two tries. Then they needed a urine sample, which was difficult to produce as I was dehydrated, even though I was trying to get liquids down. They also took chest x-rays. Finally they concluded that I had pneumonia and after calling my main doctor's nurse at UW it was decided I'd go to the ER at the UW and be hospitalized.

Supposedly they would be expecting me, but as I have experienced before, they weren't. We spent over ten hours in the ER before they decided to admit me. Fortunately they accessed my ports relatively early on in the ER and I had a good nurse at doing port accesses. You can always tell just by watching them prepare. I got all the same tests there that I got at urgent care, even though the test results were sent with us. At least we were finally in a relatively comfortable room isolation room. At one point a phlebotomist came in for routine blood draws but I told her that I have ports accessed so she went and had my nurse do it. Phlebotomists aren't trained to deal with ports.

I spent one night there, getting fluids and anti-biotics pumped through one of my ports. That is partly why I have two: so one can be used as an input while at the same time they can draw blood from the other one. They eventually decided that if it was pneumonia it was a minor case and then discharged me with a prescription of anti-biotics.